


Coyote Calls

by peterandhispirate



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Angst, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Violence, more dema shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 17:47:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15563139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterandhispirate/pseuds/peterandhispirate
Summary: The lonesome Bandito king wanders the outside, remembering.





	Coyote Calls

Mankind will always be haunted by outcomes. The test results are all anyone cares about.

_"Is this really it?" "Now what?"_

_"What comes after death, anyway?"_

And because God is a masochistic cocktease, not everyone reaches the finish line they crave so bad. For whatever reason, Josh got lucky. He had clawed his way across the trench separating 'before' and 'after' and lived to tell the tale. The results? Did they please him?

He was very lonely.

Granted, he wasn't _alone_ , necessarily. There were others - other fortunate bastards who dragged themselves across the line. But these people had people, _their_ people, the ones still limping around the 'before' side. The unfortunate bastards.

Tyler was an unfortunate bastard.

But he was also ceaseless; never-ending. That was his problem, Josh decided: he was hurling himself against the same iron bars, over and over, dusk till dawn, never making any progress. But he never lost enough blood to keep him down, either, so he just kept pushing, kept biting, kept clawing. Tyler was God's most incessant mongrel.

God seemed to reward perseverance with heartache.

Just like Tyler, the grounds beyond Dema had no beginning and no end. You could stumble one way for miles and find stability; stumble in the other direction and you'd find the quickest way to fall apart. It wasn't lawless - the laws were just ancient and primal and so far beyond Josh.

All of it was beyond him. He wasn't a long-term survivor, just a high-strung shipwreck with a looming expiration date.

Josh wandered. He wandered, and he remembered, and all of the memories were ones he shared with Tyler. There were no photographs on the outside; even if Josh wanted to write something down, he couldn't. Somewhere along the way, he had forgotten how.

Tyler could write. He hadn't been there long enough to forget - his one token of good fortune. Tyler wrote all sorts of things, but he mostly wrote for Josh. And when he wasn't scribbling down odds and ends and in-betweens, he was reading the results out loud with Josh's head lolling against his shoulder. Sometimes Josh would just smile and look up at him, painfully in awe and totally in love, and sometimes he would mumble along, trying so hard to recognize the language Dema had replaced with white noise.

Sometimes he got embarrassed. He'd duck his head, dark curls flopping over his eyes, and Tyler would squeeze his hand and say, "Not your fault that you forgot. You hear me? Not your fault."

He didn't have the luxury of embarrassment anymore.

One thing Josh hadn't forgotten was how Tyler's mouth felt against his throat, against his collarbone, against his stomach. No, he refused to forget the way Tyler kissed him, tender to a fault and always smiling. It had been easy for Josh to understand the fingers cradling his face, the pads of Tyler's thumbs running along his cheeks as if to wipe away tears. Josh would sink into his touch without fail, and every so often the tears became a reality - not because he was ashamed but because it was all so gentle.

Three months later and he would kill for gentle.

Tyler could _sing_. Josh couldn't tell you if he was any good at it, because music was like a fever dream to him, but Tyler didn't seem to care if he was good or not. He just did it - quietly, and only when twisted around Josh, but he did it.

The only music-makers on the outside were the coyotes. Josh decided he felt sorry for them: not noble enough to be wolves and too simple to be foxes, they sounded like weepy children, constantly lamenting.

Of all the beasts to empathize with, he had to pick the long-legged, big-eared misprints. Unbelievable.

Sometimes Josh would glimpse the blood between their teeth and find himself back on the inside, watching Tyler struggle to push a bed against the door. Josh was always watching him struggle, it seemed, and he could never do anything about it.

"Josh," Tyler said, teeth gritted; begging. "Josh, help me. You need to help me."

Josh shook his head. The curls bounced.

"Josh, _please_. I'm trying to protect us."

"It won't make a difference. They'll still be able to get in." He was shaking. Why was he shaking? "I swear it won't make a difference."

For a moment so brief it couldn't be recorded, Tyler looked like he hated him. Maybe that's why he was shaking. The thought of Tyler hating him was enough to make Josh dry-heave.

The moment passed and Tyler started pushing again, unrelenting, too persistent for his own good. He was at the end of a rope that stretched on forever, getting longer and shorter at the same time: a dog with its tail sewn to its tongue, going round and round, making zero sense.

What do you do with a dog like that? Josh didn't know. He was shaking.

Eventually Tyler succeeded in making a barricade - maybe it was the small, worthless victories that kept him going - and stepped back, chest heaving. Josh was scared of him. Josh was _never_ scared of him.

"It's not gonna work." He said it like an apology. "We both know it's not gonna-"

"At least I fucking tried, right? I can say that much, right?"

Josh swallowed. Maybe this was where he started dry-heaving. "Yeah. Yeah, you can say that."

Just like that, Tyler's chest deflated; he opened up his arms. "C'mere."

And Josh went to him, because at that point, it was the only thing left to do. Most of the bullshit was beyond his control, but burying his face in Tyler's chest wasn't unreasonable. Hands running up his sides, fingertips tracing the back of his neck - also within reason.

"All I want is for you to get out of here," Tyler mumbled, nose buried in Josh's hair. "S'all that matters."

Josh lifted his head to stare at him, eyes wild and forehead creased. "What about you?"

Something thudded against the door. It sounded like a fist.

" _Fuck_ ," Tyler whispered.

Josh's heart sank so far down that it got tangled up in his intestines.

The thudding continued until Josh hid his face in Tyler's neck, trembling so bad that he could've sent all of Dema crashing down around them. Maybe that would be the best thing for them; for everyone.

Three months later and fifteen miles away, Josh could still hear the scraping of the bed against the floor as the door was forced open, an inch at a time, wider and wider until they weren't alone anymore. But maybe it didn't fucking matter because they were never alone, not really - not even late at night when Tyler was nuzzling Josh's shoulder and slipping his hands under his shirt, fingertips roaming across familiar territory.

The Bishop four feet in front of them was familiar, too. They were all so oddly paternal; gentle. Warm, even. Which is why Josh was certain he was dreaming when this one stepped forward and grabbed Tyler by the shoulders, slamming his face into the closest bedpost.

Josh didn't remember what blood looked like or where it came from. All he knew was that Tyler was on the floor with liquid iron seeping out of his face and down his chin. He tried to suck in air but his chest rejected it and left him choking, twitching, drooling. The spit and the iron merged together like oil paint, and Tyler was smearing it everywhere.

Josh was dropping down next to him. Josh was cradling Tyler's head in his lap. Josh was trying so hard to wipe away the copper downpour (it just kept coming). Josh was leaning down to kiss Tyler's face because it was the only way he knew how to fix things.

Josh didn't remember what blood looked like, or where it came from, but he knew what it tasted like. He knew how it felt to have it staining his teeth and smeared across his chin. He was a naive vampire. He was _useless_.

Whenever Josh crossed paths with a coyote and its red-rimmed mouth, he didn't see a scavenger but a kisser, so sure that tenderness alone could make the bleeding stop.

_You know better now, don't you?_ Josh always thought, meeting its eyes. _We both know better_.

 

**Author's Note:**

> coyotes truly are god's bastard children and you know what? i respect that


End file.
